1. Field of the Invention
A crimping tool is provided for crimping upon on a shielded data cable a plug connector having a body portion, and a cable shield clamping portion that is initially angularly arranged in an open loading position relative to said body portion, characterized by the provision of a pair of operating handles that are pivotally connected for relative movement from an open position toward a partially closed intermediate position, thereby to displace the cable shield portion toward a crimping position in alignment with the plug connector body portion. Upon displacement of the handles from the intermediate position to the closed position, crimping means are operable to crimp simultaneously both the clamping portion concentrically about the outer circumferential surface of the shielded data cable, as well as the region at the end of the plug connector body portion adjacent the clamping portion, thereby to crimp the contacts of the plug connector to the bare conductors of the cable.
2. Description of the Related Art
Pliers-type crimping tools are well known in the patented prior art for crimping plug connectors upon the bare conductors of a cable. Certain types of tools have been proposed for crimping onto a shielded data cable a plug connector having a body portion, and a clamping portion that is clamped about the outer periphery of the shielded cable. For ease of assembly of the data cable to the plug connector, the cable clamping means is normally angularly displaced to an offset position in which it will not obstruct and interfere with the assembly process.
In the German published patent application No. 296 01 264 U1, a tool is proposed for crimping the shield clamping means and the individual contacts of the plug connector in one step. Under normal operation, it is required that prior to the introduction of the components into the crimping tool, the shield clamp must be manually aligned with the connector body, thereby resulting in an additional assembly step.
In the crimping tool of the German patent No. DE 198 20 347 C2, two separate manual movements are required to actuate separate manual levers first to bend the shield clamp into the desired clamping position, and then to perform the actual crimping process. As in the aforementioned German published application No. DE 296 01 U1, two working steps are always required in order to connect a plug connector to the data cable.
The present invention was developed to avoid the above and other drawbacks of the known crimping tools, and to provide an improved tool in which the initial alignment of the clamping portion and the subsequent simultaneous crimping of the clamping portion and the body portion to the data cable is automatically achieved upon operation of the tool with a single gripping action.